That voyage was good, so far as it went, but there's no use talking
about it, because what came afterward was better. We'd no sooner backed
off the Copra Wharf and headed down the straits, leaving a trail of
smoke and tiger smell, than Ivy went to house-keeping on the _Boldero_.
There are great house-keepers, just as there are great poets and actors.
It takes genius; that's all. And Ivy had that kind of genius. Yir Massir
had a Hindu saying that fitted her like a glove. He looked in upon her
work of preparing and systematizing for the cramped weeks at sea and
said: "The little mem-sahib is a born woman."
That's just what she is. There are born idiots and born leaders. Some
are born male and some female; but a born woman is the rarest thing in
the world, the most useful and the most precious. She had never kept
house, but there was nothing for her to learn. She worked things so that
whenever I could come off duty she was at leisure to give all her care
and thought to me.
There was never a millionaire who had more speckless white suits than I
had, though it's a matter almost of routine for officers to go dirty on
anything but the swell liners. Holes in socks grew together under her
fingers, so that you had to look close to see where they'd been. She
even kept a kind of dwarf hibiscus, with bright red flowers, alive and
flourishing in the thick salt air; and she was always slipping into the
galley to give a new, tasty turn to the old sea-standbys.
The crew, engineer, and stokers were all Chinks. Hadley always put his
trust in them and they come cheap. We had forty coolies who berthed
forward, going out on contract to work on a new government dry-dock at
Paiulu. I don't mind a Chink myself, so long as he keeps his habits to
himself and doesn't over-smoke; but they're not sociable. Except for Yir
Massir and myself, there was no one aboard for Ivy to talk to. Yir
Massir's duty kept him busy with the health of the collection for the
Sydney Zoo, and Ivy found time to help, to advise, and to learn. They
made as much fuss between them over the beasts as if they had been
babies; and the donkey-engine was busy most of the day hoisting cages to
the main-deck and lowering them again, so that the beasts could have a
better look at the sea and a bit of sun and fresh air. As it was, a good
many of the beasts and all the birds roomed on the main-deck all the
time. Sometimes Yir Massir would take out a chetah--a nasty, snarling,
pin-headed piece of long-legged malice--and walk him up and down on a
dog-chain, same as a woman walks her King Charlie. He gave the monkeys
all the liberty they could use and abuse; it was good sport to see them
chase themselves and each other over the masts and upper-works.
The most you can say of going out with a big tonnage of beasts is that,
if you're healthy and have no nerves, you can just stand it. Sometimes
they'll all howl together for five or six hours at a time; sometimes
they'll all be logy and still as death, except one tiger, who can't make
his wants understood and who'll whine and rumble about them all round
the clock. I don't know which is worse, the chorus or the solo. And
then, of course, the smell side to the situation isn't a matter for
print. If I say that we had twenty hogsheads of disinfectants and
deodorizers along it's all you need know. Anyhow, according to Yir
Massir, it was the smell that killed big Bahut's mate. And she'd been
brought up in an Indian village and ought to have been used to all the
smells, from A to Z.
One elephant more or less doesn't matter to me, especially when it's
insured, but Yir Massir's grief and self-reproach were appalling; and
Ivy felt badly too. It was as much for her sake as Yir Massir's that I
read a part of the burial service out of the prayer-book and committed
the body of "this our sister" to the deep. It may have been
sacrilegious, but I don't care. It comforted Ivy some and Yir Massir a
heap. And it did this to me, that I can't look at a beast now without
thinking that--well, that there's not such an awful lot of difference
between two legs and four, and that maybe God put Himself out just as
much to make one as the other.
We swung her overside by heavy tackle. What with the roll of the ship
and the fact that she swung feet down, she looked alive; and the funeral
looked more like a drowning than a burial.
We had no weights to sink her; and when I gave the word to cut loose she
made a splash like a small tidal wave and then floated.
We could see her for an hour, like a bit of a slate-colored island with
white gulls sitting on it.
And that night Yir Massir waited on us looking like some old crazy loon
out of the Bible. He'd made himself a prickly shirt of sackcloth and had
smeared his black head and brown face with gray ashes. Big Bahut
whimpered all night and trumpeted as if his heart were broken.